The 2008 Sawamura Award

by Patrick Newman (Oct 4, 2008)

Work and my upcoming home move have
settled down a little bit, so it's time to catch up on a little NPB
bloggin'. There's no immediate end in sight to my hectic schedule, but
I'm hoping to be able to get back to posting 2-3 times a week.

Let's start the comeback with a look a this year's race for the Sawamura Award. With apologies to Satoshi Komatsu and Colby Lewis, two pitchers have clearly separated themselves from the pack: Nippon Ham's Yu Darvish and Rakuten's Hisashi Iwakuma.
Darvish's regular season is over, while Iwakuma still has another start
left, but we have enough numbers to compare. Here's my fairly
simplistic look at them head-to-head.

Selected Rate Stats

Name

ERA

WHIP

K/9IP

HR/9IP

K/BB

Yu Darvish

1.88

0.90

9.35

0.49

4.73

Hisashi Iwakuma

1.93

0.99

7.15

0.14

4.43

Darvish has an edge here, but it's minimal. Both pitchers have
sub-2.00 ERAs, sub-1.00 WHIPs, and 4 K/BB ratios. Darvish has struck
more guys out, but Iwakuma has better controlled the home run ball.
Both guys have been outstanding by these metrics.

Selected Accumulated Stats

Games

Starts

CG

Shutouts

No-walk CG

Wins

Loses

Win %

IP

Yu Darvish

25

24

10

2

2

16

4

0.800

200.2

Hisashi Iwakuma

27

27

5

2

3

20

4

0.833

195.2

Iwakuma has a big edge here in hitting the 20 win mark, becoming the first NPB 20-game winner since Kazumi Saito and Kei Igawa both did it in 2003. This is a particularly phenomenal achievement for a guy pitching for a last place team.

Darvish has been a workhorse, throwing 200 innings in just 24
starts. It should be noted, however, that he threw two meaningless
innings in Nippon Ham's 17-0 drubbing of Rakuten in the Fighters' last regular season game to reach 200.

Hits Allowed

HR Allowed

K

BB

Runs

Earned Runs

Yu Darvish

136

11

208

44

44

42

Hisashi Iwakuma

158

3

155

35

48

42

The WHIP numbers shown above give an indication of how unhittable
these guys have been this year, and these totals underscore that
further. Despite Iwakuma's remarkable HR allowed total, overall Darvish
has been even less hittable.

The Sawamura Award

The recipient of the Sawamura Award is decided by a panel of great
NPB pitchers, who in part base their decision on the following criteria
(courtesy of Wikipedia):

Games started: 25

Wins: 15

Complete games: 10

W/L Percentage: .600

Innings Pitched: 200

ERA: 2.50

Strikeouts: 150

With the exception of Iwakuma's CG total (5), both pitchers meet
all the criteria, or come so close that it doesn't matter. So it'll
come down to what the selection committee values more highly: Iwakuma's
win total for his also-ran team, or Darvish's general unhittable-ness.

Personally, my head says it's Darvish but my gut says it's
Iwakuma. This would be an easier choice if the Fighters had scored a
few more runs behind Darvish early in the season, but they didn't.
Iwakuma was consistent throughout the whole year and helped give
Rakuten's fans their first year of competitive baseball to cheer for.
In the end, I think I'd go for Iwakuma.